The present invention relates to the field of electronic cabling, and more particularly to the field of cable management employed in organizing building telecommunication wiring.
As is known in the art, electronic cabling such as those found in telecommunications cabling, requires support and organization in an orderly fashion to promote efficient distribution and maintenance of the cabling throughout a building. Telephone and data cables in the building, for example, interconnect telephone handsets and computer terminals located at desks and offices throughout the building with each other and with centralized communication facilities, including trunk lines, network servers, and PBX equipment.
To permit flexibility in configuring and later changing the interconnections, cables are run from each telephone, computer, trunk line, PBX, server, and other devices, to a central interconnection "closet." The end of each wire of a cable is connected to terminals in a patch cord. Typically, the interconnection closet consists of two groups of cables, i.e., patch cords and building wiring.
Setting up and maintaining an interconnection closet is a complex endeavor because present systems may consist of up to 500 or more cables. One approach to aid in the management of such a large number of cables, for example, is to use a cable organizer, which may be either rack or wall mountable, to route and secure cables. Such an approach manages one of the two groups of cables, i.e., patch cords.
Another approach to this problem to is incorporate a tray for securing cables in the patch cord design. Still another approach has been to provide a device that has a provision for routing cables either installed behind the patch cord or underneath, and in some cases on the side rails in relay racks or cabinets. With either approach, means is only provided for separating one of the two major "cable traffic" bundles, i.e., patch cords.
In still another approach, bundles of wires are wrapped with cable ties and placed in cabinets. With this approach, cables are not separated in any designated fashion or organized in any logical manner, but grouped together in a random fashion as a bundle. Maintaining such a bundle requires removal of the cable ties and rebundling upon completion.